


Fullmetal 8itch

by mitspeiler



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Homestuck
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Amestris, Automail, Awesome, Crossover, Fusion, Mirthful messiahs, Multi, fuck yeah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vriska intrudes on God's territory-because what else is Vriska going to do with her time?-and gets herself and Aradia horribly mutilated in the process.  She joins the military as a State Alchemist  in order to use its resources to find the legendary Philosopher's Stone, said to have the power to restore the Elric sisters' bodies.  As their research begins to uncover the dark machinations that have been operating their country for centuries, will Vriska find that the human cost of her goal is impossibly high?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fullmetal 8itch: Pilot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [polyfandrous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyfandrous/gifts).



            Vriska was almost paralyzed with pain.  The entire left side of her face felt like it was on fire, and her eye was a fiery black hole of maddening agony.  On her hands and knees, she could see bright crimson blood dribbling onto the floor in an unbreaking stream with her remaining eye.  She tried to shut her eye and stop it; she couldn’t.  “Fuck,” she gasped, choking back a sob.  Vriska Elric did not cry.  “Aradia, I told you to double-check the fucking proportions,” she growled.  She wasn’t even actually mad at her sister; she was trying to distract herself.  “I don’t hear you crying like a little bitch so I’m assuming you didn’t get _brutally savaged by some fucking shadow/eye/hand bastards_!”

            She lurched into a sitting position, jerking her head around angrily, spraying gobbets of blood everywhere.  “Just my luck,” she began, but did not continue.  Her sister was nowhere to be seen.  There was a thick fog in the basement laboratory that stank of sulfur; results of their mother’s tinkering could be seen laying against the walls, mechanical handmaids in formfitting ‘clothes’ with wiry hair and unblinking, dull red eyes.  “Aradia?” she asked, heart starting to race.  Something started dribbling down her right eye as well.

            “Vriska,” said a deep, wheezing voice off in the corner.  Her heart raced, for a different reason.  She remembered that voice, her sole succor once the mother she’d worshipped had left without a trace, a propos of nothing.  “Dad?”  Despite the pain and confusion, a smile managed to crack her blue-painted lips.  Rufioh Elric, dead these past two years, returned to life.  Vriska did start crying now.  The sacrifice had been much greater than anticipated, but it had been paid, and now she could collect her miracle.

            Too weak to stand, Vriska crawled through the mist towards the voice.  But what about Aradia?  Had she been taken entirely?  The thought was distressing but she could barely process it through the pain and the joyous anticipation. 

            Something squished and popped underhand and her hand darted back of its own accord.  She looked up, and saw a pair of glowing red eyes watching her from the fog.  They were affixed to a raw, red skull, a flayed corpse that was somehow alive and breathing, and suffering.  “Vriska,” it gurgled.  She screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Merry Christmas! :D  
> I will probably turn this into a trilogy with Conqueror of Shambala and Brotherhood as the next parts.  
> This is the first of what I am tentatively and stupidly referring to as mitspeiler's Christmas giftstravaganza, a fact no one cares about except potentially the people I give gifts to.  
> This chapter is clearly very short; as of the publication date I am still working on it and a subsequent chapter will be posted shortly. This prologue exists for the mere purpose of having something up by the date so I can say I did it :p


	2. Shooing Out the Clowns

            The prophet Gamzee could do anything, or so they said.  He turned water into Faygo, stone into pie, and garbage into a flock of birds.  He had turned Lior, a dried up desert town on the edge of civilization, hundreds of miles from anywhere of relevance, into a bustling oasis of joy and mirth, all in the name of the Mirthful Messiahs, the new gods of joy and life that he claimed had visited him as he wandered the desert.

            “So he’s clearly using alchemy to fleece this town,” said Vriska with a yawn as the geese thundered away, honking madly as they went.  “Jesus fucking Christ everyone in this country is so gullible.  Any dumbass kid could just pick up a book and summon up molesty, horrorterror shadow hands to grope their faces off if they wanted to.  It’s not like alchemy’s a new thing!  I bet I could get these people to worship me as a god if I showed them how a fucking radio works.”  She tossed her head; Vriska’s long, wavy red hair dazzled in the strong desert sunlight, turning the petulant, near-childish gesture into a dramatic one.  The years since the incident had made her into an athletic, strong young woman, pretty enough to turn more than a few heads but far too short for her own liking.  She wore a long, loose blue coat, surprisingly useful for the climate, over a black shirt; both were embroidered with the alchemic symbol “ **♏** ” in an elaborate font.  She wore a red sash at her waist, with matching leather boots and gloves in an archaic yet stylish cut, and a red leather eye-patch that completely obscured her left eye.  Overall, it had the effect of making her look like a pirate.

            Aradia nodded once, concisely, with a mechanical whirring in her neck.  Aradia had not been as lucky as her sister.  Now, her soul was confined to a cold, mechanical body.  At least Vriska had had the presence of mind to pick one that was vaguely woman shaped.  It even had hair, a stream of wire that almost looked like glorious mane of hair that had once rivaled her sister’s.  “He does seem to be breaking the laws of alchemy however.”

            The boy in the wheelchair looked scandalized.  “How can he be breaking laws?” he stammered.  “I mean, he’s not doing anything wrong—”

            “Scientific laws,” Vriska snapped.  “You can’t make something out of nothing or a lot of something out of very little.  You can’t make organic compounds out of inorganic ones, and you can’t create life,” she was counting off on her fingers, “and those are just the dumb baby obvious ones that even stupid people should get, there’s hundreds of other kinds of rules that only make sense if you sit down and think about them for _years_ and even then you start suspecting that someone is fucking with you!”

            Tavros was slowly backing his wheelchair away from the angry stranger who looked like a pirate.  “But, if what he’s doing is unexplainable by, uh, science,” he gulped, gathering up his courage, “doesn’t that make it, um, well, a miracle?  By, uh, definition?”

            Aradia shook her head.  “It simply means that science has yet to explain it.”

            Vriska popped the fingers on her right hand with her left.  “There are no miracles in life, Tavros, because that would imply that someone is taking care of us.  God’s an angry kid with a magnifying glass and we’re a bunch of ants.”  She grinned fiendishly, and Tavros had the sudden feeling that he might be in the presence of the devil.  He spun himself around and wheeled away as fast as he could.  “Come back here!” Vriska shouted, shoving her way into the crowd.  “I’m not done with you yet!”  Silently, Aradia followed.

 

            Doze was a slack-jawed zealot so slow he could barely process what you told him to do by the time he’d finished doing it, paradoxically making him a fantastic minion.  Gamzee roared in his face, distraught.  “MOTHER FUCK WHO'S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY?”  He waved a handful of photographs in Doze’s face.  The Elric sisters walking into town yesterday, getting soused on the Faygo fountain, drunkenly arguing theology with a local restaurateur; the younger (she must have been the younger, based on how short and foolish she was) flashed her State Alchemist watch at people and tried to push her weight around.  There was only one possibility; the State had finally taken notice of his operation and sent out one of their many dogs to take a bite out of him.  “IT'S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FUCK IS WHAT!” 

            Doze stared at his master.  Gamzee growled and shoved a gun into his hands.  “JIVE-ASS MICK TAKE THE FUCK CARE OF IT BEFORE MORE BITCHES I AIN’T NEED START FUCKIN’ SHIT ALL UP INS!”  Doze shuffled his way towards the office door, drooling. 

            Gamzee sat down and composed himself.  It did not require particularly much effort; it was like a switch in his head he could flip whenever necessary.  “Eliminate the Fullmetal Alchemist, and the Mirthful Messiahs will reward you for your great sacrifice,” he said, his voice an easy drawl that wavered up and down in tone in a relaxed, soothing way.  “When the Dark Carnival claims us all, you will stand tall and say ‘I followed the will of the prophet and through it, the will of y’all Mercifullest of Motherfuckers’, and your prizes will be great, as fuck even.  Not the shitty ones you get for popping, like, two balloons, the good ones.  The big motherfucking teddy bears that is cuddly as motherfuckers and bigger than a real motherfuckin’ bear.”  Even with the blessing hastening his departure, Doze still took quite a while to leave.

 

            Tavros could not kneel at the altar, so instead he sort of crouched in his wheelchair, hands cupped, praying fervently to the Mirthful Messiahs.  Their harshwhimsical faces somehow both sneered down at him and looked on with kindness.  No earthly artist could have created that expression, he knew.  It was an expression of Gamzee’s divinely inspired authority.  He hoped.

            “You know I’m almost inclined to agree with those images,” said Vriska, sitting peacefully on a nearby pew.  Tavros jumped and nearly fell out of his wheelchair; as it stood it merely rolled backwards off the raised dais where the altar stood, and turned to face Vriska of its own accord.  “Because the being I met calling itself God was a creepy, sexist, gropey bastard that only the kind of people who like clowns would worship,” she stuck out her tongue in revulsion.

            “How did you find me!?” Tavros asked, in a panic.

            Vriska blew a raspberry.  “Where the Hell else would you have gone?” She made a grand, sweeping gesture.  “Listen to me Tavros; if you ever walk again, it’s going to be because an alchemist figured out how to regrow nerve tissue, not because you polished some magic clown-statue’s bone-bulge until rainbow jizz splattered all over you and turned you into a fucking winged fairy, _capisce_?”

            “Why do you even care what other people do with their time?” Tavros shouted, then immediately grew redfaced as Vriska shot him a withering glare that would have killed a rhinoceros at twenty paces.  He gulped and continued.  “I’m not hurting anyone!  If I want to think that a benevolent supernatural being is, um, looking out for me, and caring about me, when no one else is, who are you to say I shouldn’t?  What’s the alternative?”

            Vriska shrugged.  “Find a goal and work for it.  Stand on your own two legs…” she grinned villainously, “ _metaphorically,_ that is.”

 

            The cathedral to the Mirthful Messiahs had a fairly standard layout for the center of such an unorthodox religion, and so Aradia had been able to find a comfortable doorway to loom in just outside the altar with relative ease.  She was not relaxing, she was simply inert, waiting for a signal from Vriska should anything happen.  She didn’t have proper feelings anymore.  She knew what she _should_ be feeling at any given time, much as one can feel the general shape and texture of an object through a thick glove.  Without a flesh and blood body however, she could not properly feel anything.  The very thought made her think that she should be angry all the time, which she could not be.  It was paradoxical and ought to have been frustrating, but as it stood, she felt nothing at all about her situation.  She was simply, more or less, okay with it.

            “Fullmetal Alchemist,” a loud voice declared very slowly.  She allowed him to finish.  A gun cocked behind her head.

            “I’m not the one you’re looking for,” said Aradia.

            “But you’re fully metal,” Doze said, eventually.

            “Fullmetal is also a euphemism for incredibly stubborn and a little bit bitchy in the Central City vernacular,” Aradia intoned.  “You’ll find that I am quite amiable and do not meet those criteria.  My sister however has those traits in excess.”

            “Don’t try to trick me,” Doze grumbled.

            “I clearly won’t be able to convince you,” said Aradia.  “Just do what you are going to do.”

            “Really?” he asked.

            “I am alright with it, yes.”  And then Doze shot her in the back of the head.

 

            Vriska leapt to her feet as soon as she saw Aradia falling through the doorway.  The derpy-faced man raised his gun, a mind-bogglingly big revolver that probably counted as a small cannon, in the most telegraphed series of movements she had ever seen.  Vriska threw a prayer book at him and leapt out of the way just as he fired; the bullet struck the book and it exploded into a cloud of torn bits of paper.  He fired again and Vriska blocked it with her left arm; the bullet bounced off it as if it had been a rubber ball and smacked uselessly into the floor.  Tavros’s eyes went wide.

            Aradia sprang to her feet and grabbed Doze by the neck.  He emptied the revolver into her chest, where the remaining three bullets * _plinked_ * harmlessly and fell to the ground.  “This counts as self-defense,” Aradia warned, before throwing him through the wall.

            The sound of squeaky wheels rolling away as fast as humanly possible filled the dull silence that often follows very loud noises.  Vriska scowled, an expression that looked almost like the bearing of teeth.  “Oi!  Get back here you useless cripple I’m not done taunting you yet!” 

            She stormed off after him, followed quickly by Aradia.  “Perhaps we should investigate why that man attacked me?”

            Vriska blew a raspberry.  “He attacked you because he thought you were me, and he thought you were me because the Fuhrer gave me a confusing code name!”

            “But why would anyone want to kill _you_?” Aradia asked.

            They both stopped and looked at each other.  Vriska laughed.  Aradia did not, but the lights in her eyes glowed a light pink, indicating enjoyment.  “Hey,” said Vriska, “What happened to your whole ‘emotionless girl’ bit?”

            “Sarcasm is not an emotion,” Aradia pointed out correctly.

 

            The inner sanctum of the cathedral was deep underground, an enormous chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling and raised platform at the far end from the door.  It was here that Tavros rolled his four-wheeled device, and here on the platform, that he saw the prophet Gamzee, a beatific smile on his face.  He was tall and thin, some might say wiry or even spindly, and his face was covered in black and white paint, a bit like a clown’s makeup, but also something like a skull, framed by a massive mane of tangled, wiry hair.  He wore a tastefully cut suit of very dark purple fabric and a white collar around his neck.  The only ostentatious parts of his outfit were his top hat, with a bright red feather in the band, and a ring with a huge red stone on his left hand.  For some reason there was a bright blue iguana on his shoulder.  “What up Tavbro?” he said.  “You look all hells a distressed.  You can tell me my man, and if the Mirthful Messiahs make me able to help you then I will serve you up a little miracle as quick as you please!”

            “They’re monsters,” Tavros gasped.  No one could blame a man in a wheelchair for being out of shape.  “They can stop bullets with their skin and they’re so strong they can—”

            “I take exception to that,” Vriska called as the sister stormed into the chamber.  “I’m not a monster!  I’m an anti-villain on my worst day, my _worst_ day!”  She pointed at Gamzee dramatically.  “Regardless I’ll be taking that stone now. The one on your ring of course.”

            “And now they’re trying to steal your jewelry!” Tavros declared.

            Gamzee raised his hand.  “I’m handlin’ it brofasa.”  He gestured grandly, though his demeanor was such that almost any action looked lazy.  “So which one of y’all did my bro Doze try to shoot?”

            Aradia raised her hand.  Gamzee nodded.  “He’s always been a bit slow,” he said in a confiding voice.  The iguana * _thipped_ * its tongue.  He looked at Vriska.  “So you’re the real Fullmetal Alchemist right?”

            “Fuck yeah,” she said, pointing at herself.  “Though it’s pretty useful having a conspicuous decoy who’s practically indestructible, I’ll admit.”

            “You’re shorter than I imagined,” Gamzee commented.

            Vriska laughed.  “I’m going to drink Faygo out of your skull if you don’t hand the ring over!”

            “Now why’s the state gotta be all up in my business?” Gamzee asked reasonably.  “This town was a total shithole before I showed up—”

            “I didn’t think it was that bad,” Tavros began.

            “I SAID I WAS HANDLING IT,” Gamzee roared, dropping his priestly mask for a second.  He chuckled and went on as he had been.  “I brought a little joy to this Podunk desert town.  The peeps here was miserable all day, workin’ and workin’ for a pocketful of change, spending money on stale water and dry bread.  Their idea of a holiday was sitting around being bored inside instead of outside.  I done good work here, why you gotta try to take it all away?”

            Vriska sighed.  “The problem with working with the government is that everyone thinks you’re doing that _allllllll the time_.  This isn’t a business trip,” she said, cracking her knuckles and smiling villainously.  “I’m just here for your Philosopher’s stone.”

            Gamzee’s eyes widened.  “I get it,” he hissed.  The iguana crawled to the top of his top hat with agonizing slowness.  He saw Aradia reach for the ground, holding a piece of chalk and instantly raised the ring high into the air.  “You’re just,” he began, “SELFISH!”  His eyes snapped wide open, becoming huge and bloodshot as his lips pulled back in sneer that was exactly like the baring of teeth.  With a rippling wave of red electricity, all the ground except for his platform was transformed into eye-wrenchingly bright confetti in a dozen different colors.  Tavros and the sisters began to sink.  “Help!” cried the paralyzed boy as his wheelchair was swallowed up by tiny bits of paper.  A stone hand reached out of the platform and plucked him out of it, laying him down safely at Gamzee’s feet.  “No transmutation for you sister,” he said with a wag of his finger.

            Vriska was up to her chest in confetti: there was more underneath that seemed to go all the way down, but at a point her weight pressed it into a solid surface, enabling her to walk.  She waded through the confetti towards Gamzee, scowling furiously.  ”You think this is going to stop me?!”  She raised both hands above her head and clapped, then touched them to the ground.  A burst of electrical discharge made the confetti fly up into the air and immediately collapse inward to a single point.  The smell of lightning and burnt paper filled the air, and an instant later, Vriska was holding an elaborate sword, a huge falchion of blued steel shaped like a fishhook.  Bits of burning confetti fluttered down from the ceiling like rain.  “Let’s kick his ass Aradia,” she said, entering a fighting stance, holding the sword high above her head like a scorpion’s stinger.

            “One moment,” her sister intoned.  She was using a pocket knife to pick confetti out of her joints and her movements were incredibly sluggish.  “Actually, several moments.”

            Vriska blew another raspberry.  “You are so usele—”

            “KILL THE RATCHET ASS MECHANO-BITCHES!” Gamzee roared, the ring flaring with light.  A black thing like a serpent with an impossibly wide mouth surged up from underneath the ground.  There were tentacles on its face that put one in mind of a cat’s whiskers.  It had wings like a bird and six clawed feet, and gave the impression that someone had tried to create a Xingese dragon out of taxidermy.  Someone had dressed it up in clown clothes for some reason, and there was a short, black sword lodged in its chest that looked vaguely organic—was that part of its body?

            “Really?” Vriska snorted, “A _chimera_?  Why not just straight up tell everyone that you’re evil and spare me the trouble of saving them?”

            Fast as lightning the beast struck, streaking through the air and drawing its odd bone-sword as it did so.  Its vicious jaws clamped down on Vriska’s left arm, tearing her fine coat to shreds.  The sword stroke had cut into her eyepatch, but Vriska was fast too, and had caught its arm in the notch of her sword and lopped it off.  Uncaring, the chimera began to chew.  A mechanical scraping filled the air and its black venom dribbled uselessly to the floor.  Vriska stabbed the monster in the chest and kicked it away.  Her sleeve and eyepatch fell away, revealing cold, mechanical prosthetics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> behold, it is done, the first episode transformed into a fanfic!  
> Not quite the best example of my work but starting a new fic is always tiring, so naturally I’m going to do it several more times over the next few days because I’m the best/worst friend ever.  
> I have a very clear image in my head of human Vriska (you know she’s a redhead you _just know it_ ) but for some reason cannot imagine human Tavros without his huge damn horns. Alas.  
> Gamzee here is a bit different from Father Cornello obviously. Since he’s basically involved in a voodoo cult in-canon, I decided it should be a voodoo cult here, and modeled his outfit after Dr. Facilier from _the Princess and the Frog_.  
>  Part of the motivation for my casting is well, how much of a firebrand Vriska and Ed both are (and yet how different), coupled with how Al and Aradia(bot) are much calmer and can kick their counterparts asses with ease. Everything else was just sort of made up. The best part is that since Mindfang is Hohenheim (hush I implied as much in the prologue) that means that Aranea can be the villain in the eventual _Sisterhood_ spinoff!


	3. Sanction THIS *rude gesture*

            “Everything makes sense forever,” said Gamzee, a beatific smile on his face.  He nodded a few times.  The seven pupils on Vriska’s eye zoomed in on him suspiciously; she could see his bones underneath his skin through their red-tinted lenses.

            “Ye…yeah?” said Tavros squeamishly as he battled with revulsion at Vriska’s gruesome prosthetics as well as curiosity. He rolled slightly away from Gamzee as the prophet suddenly exploded with livid fury.  “YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKIN’ WENT UP AND TRIED TO ALCHEMIZE A HUMAN SOUL OR SOME WHACK-ASS SHIT!  Y’ALL TRIED TO INTRUDE ON GOD’S TERRITORY AND HE WAS ALL ‘NAH Y’ALL ARE SOME RATCHET ASS HOS GET UP OUT MY BUSINESS’!”  He snatched the iguana off his top hat and flung it at the sisters; whispering, he added “if you try to challenge the sun Tavbro, you just get burned.”  In midflight, the animal crackled with crimson light before growing to monstrous size and assuming some traits resembling a chameleon.  Its tongue * _thipped_ * out and Vriska saw the blue barbs on the end, glistening with sticky saliva, an instant before the tongue slammed into her shoulder like a spear.

            Ignoring the searing pain, she pulled the iguana towards her with her organic arm and planted her heel in its stomach.  “A little help!?” she shouted, trying to keep from being reeled into its broad mouth as its huge eyes spun wildly (and unappealingly).  The wound hurt a lot more than it should.  It was probably poisonous.

            Aradia was still picking the confetti out of her joints.  “I’ve freed my arms,” she said, “just let me work on my knees and I will be right with you.”  She lifted her skirt up slightly and set to work very carefully.  Vriska growled.

            “Fine!” she shouted, grappling with the creepy, zygodactyl hands of the chameleon/iguana thing, like a meaty blue pincer trying to clamp onto her throat.  Being unable to clap her hands, Vriska simply raised her mechanical arm and brought it down in a vicious hammer-blow onto the chimera’s head.  The chop left a nasty dent on the top of the chimera’s skull and its bug eyes popped out even more.  It drooled, as if confused, before stumbling and falling down dead, its weight almost dragging Vriska down with it..

            At that moment, all the doors into the inner sanctum were thrown open and armed guards in green and purple poured in.  Gamzee raised his hand, the stone glowing with ruby light, and they raised their weapons and fired.

            “Finished,” said Aradia, leaping in front of her sister as the bullets bounced harmlessly off her on onto the floor as useless lumps of lead.  Vriska quickly snatched up her sword and hacked off the sticky tongue before taking position next to Aradia.  “You kill the twenty on the left,” said Vriska.  “I’ll kill the ones on the right.”

            “We’re severely outnumbered,” Aradia noticed.  She scratched a transmutation circle in the confetti littering the floor with the tip of her foot.  “Thanks to the prophet’s stunt out enemy has the high ground,” she continued as, with a flash of blue light, the circle turned into a hole.  “You are injured,” an eastern chain-whip composed of nine heavy rods rose out of the ground, tipped with an elaborate ram-skull knob.  “And you have never been any good at making weapons; that sword is already bent out of shape,” she said, effortlessly moving through a handful of tai chi forms before stopping with the chain wrapping around her upper midsection and one end in either hand.

            Vriska grinned evilly, trying not to show the weakness in her bleeding shoulder.  “I like those odds.”

            “I don’t,” said Aradia simply, before throwing the chain to the ground where it exploded into a cloud of brilliant sparks, colored smoke and high pitched whistles.  As the guards fired wildly into the smoke, Aradia snatched up her sister and ran off, Vriska swearing and pounding on her metal back all the way. 

            She dropkicked through a wall, the bricks becoming brittle sandstone and pulverizing just as her feet connected. Aradia ran off in an intentionally confusing pattern until she was sure to have a moment of reprieve, then dropped Vriska to the floor.  Her sister took another swing at her as she stooped to examine her shoulder, but it wouldn’t have hurt even if Aradia weren’t made of metal. “This is poisoned,” she said, ripping the blue-green barbs out of her shoulder with mechanical precision.

            “You bitch,” Vriska growled every time another one of the things came out.  “Just finish me off and get it over with!”

            “I don’t want to kill you,” said Aradia as she took hold of the last one.  “Well, most of the time,” she amended as she yanked it free.  “Gamzee’s public image is a merciful one,” she said, dusting off her skirt as Vriska swore and vowed vengeance.  “You will probably receive medical treatment if you’re captured.”

            “And you’ll break me out right?” said Vriska drowsily.  “Right?”  Aradia was already gone.

 

            The next day, Tavros wheeled himself around the palace, shaken by what he had seen, trying to find the prophet.  Those girls had turned themselves into mechanical monsters.  Now one of them was in custody and the other…had been torn to pieces.  Gamzee had made an announcement that dangerous people were on the loose, agents of the devil who had tried to rob him and take his life, and that everyone should stay inside…but to prove their love to the prophet the people had found the girl, Aradia, and destroyed her.  She’d been almost entirely hollow. 

            But they deserved what they got, Tavros thought to himself, though unconvincingly.  They’d tried to…create a human soul?  Change it?  To what end?  It was awful and frightening and more than a little confusing.  Had they been trying to…resurrect the dead?  The idea of actual necromancy filled his head and Tavros spun his wheels all the faster, as if to leave the ugly thought behind.  Gamzee had said they’d intruded on God’s territory.  That was easy enough to understand.  No one should have the power to resurrect the dead.  But…didn’t the prophet do that?  He had; there were lots of people who he had brought to life, some after long years of being gone from the world.  They’d all left town sure, to spread the miraculous word, but no one ever heard from them again…all the same that wasn’t the point.  The prophet could bring back the dead because the Mirthful Messiahs gave him that power.  But…the alchemists had been after his ring, and later, Gamzee told him what it was.  A Philosopher’s stone.  “Just because you can explain shit don’t mean it ain’t a miracle,” Gamzee had said.  “Hell, I think that makes it more miraculous.”  The stone had glittered like blood in sunlight as he explained the miraculous vision he had received in the desert, the red-robed angel who had told him of the Messiahs and gifted him with the power to work wonders.

            Tavros was so distracted by these troubling thoughts that he opened exactly the wrong door and saw a sight that chilled his blood.  The tiny room had rows upon rows of animals on shelves, preserved in jars, some as large as infants, all of them were horribly deformed.  A table at the far end underneath a tiny rectangular window held several specimens that had been pinned down like insects to a card, wretched things covered in thick, fibrous tissues, purple-blue in color, which reminded him of the roots of trees.  It looked like, in places, it had burst clean through the bone.

            Tavros rolled backwards and bumped into something. Looking up in horror, he saw the smiling purple eyes of the prophet looking down at him.  “The red angel didn’t give me an instruction manual,” he said, absently looking at his fingers.  “I can do almost anything but I need to know _how_ , you peep what I’m tellin’ at you?”  Tavros blinked.  “The first few miracles I tried was disasters.   I knew I’d have to practice before tryin’ to give back my main dude’s legs!”  He smiled brightly and Tavros almost smiled back.

            Gamzee gestured grandly.  “And you know what motherfucker?  Nervous tissue, it turns out, is a real bitch to grow.”  At the far end, one of the creatures shuffled to its feet, not dead at all.  Somehow.  Its skeletal body was covered in some sort of thick, green slime and lacked a head entirely.  It had scythe-like arms, like a mantis, that it used as canes to feel its way towards the door, leaving little stab wounds as it passed.  Most horribly, the monster had no head.  “Real good practice though.  For making chimeras I mean.”

            Tavros, a low moan of terror escaping his throat, turned desperately back to Gamzee.  The prophet was standing just outside the door, preparing to shut it.  “I hate to cut and run Tavros but you all up and saw my secret room and secrets only stay secret if one person knows, you know what I mean!  Sorry it turned out I couldn’t help you,” he whispered sadly as he shut the door.  “I was motherfucking _close_ too!”  The lock clicked shut.

            The monster pounced.

            So did something else.                         

            A grey shadow streaked across the room from the tiny window.  There was a wet, wretched crack, and the skeletal creature was lying in a heap at Tavros’s feet.  Aradia’s metal form loomed over him.  He opened his mouth to scream and she firmly clamped a metal hand over it.  “Oh no, Aradia has risen from the dead,” she said, voice somehow sterile yet dripping with sarcasm.  “She must be a warlock.  Or possibly a devil.  A body composed entirely out of spare automail is far too much of a stretch.  Gasp.  She was able to use sleight of hand the other day to give the illusion of a heavy metal rod when it was actually a glass one filled with an assortment of chemicals that when combined make a super-par flashbang grenade that is also a hit at parties.  She must be a sorcerer.  Now that we have all of that out of our systems I am going to remove my hand and you will ask me how I got in here and what I am going to do next.”  Tavros nodded.  Aradia’s eyes went pink and a slight smile caused her metal lips to stretch; Tavros wondered how they’d managed that.

            “So…” he said, zeroing in on the one word he had some knowledge of.  “Sleight of hand?  So you didn’t use magic or anything like that?”

            Aradia’s impossible smile inverted itself.  “One day,” she vowed, clasping her hands as if in prayer, “we will visit a town with a good school so we don’t have to explain ourselves to everyone.”  She took a pen from the folds of her skirt and drew a star inside a circle on the door.  She placed her hands on it and it flashed blue and disappeared.  The door swung open.  “Alchemy is a science.  A very esoteric science that uses forces we don’t understand to instantly do things we couldn’t normally do that only a handful of special people can put into practice and makes extensive use of geometry and astrology.  But it is most certainly a science.”  She stamped her foot absently.  “ _Not_ magic.”

            Tavros thought about it as he rolled into the hallway and shut the door behind him.  Aradia made another transmutation circle and locked it.  “Notice these angular markings on the door,” she said.  “The same ones can be found on all statues of the Mirthful Messiahs, indicating hastily done alchemy.”

            “How is this a science?” Tavros snapped.  “I’ve read enough fantasy books to know—”

            “Hush,” Aradia interrupted.  “It’s a science because a scientist said so once.”  She looked at him, eyes glowing deep red.  “Now help me expose a tyrant or kindly go and hide in a corner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Ms. Fandrous! :D This fic will only update on occasions when it will be appropriate to give you gifts :P  
> So at two chapters an episode this fic will end up achieving over a hundred chapters! I probably will not continue that trend though. There’s a lot of filler coming up and there will be much fat trimming.  
> Note that if Vriska had managed to get away, she would have killed a whole lot of villagers instead of letting herself get captured like Ed (more or less) did. The important thing in a fusion is the little differences, yo.  
> I’ve done movie crossovers before but not a TV show one. The odd thing is how much exposition there is in the first few episodes of a series. Watch these first couple episodes again and you’ll see that they’re just shouting the rules of alchemy and backstory at each other for an hour, it’s a little dull. Fortunately we’re going to meet some new characters soon. You all will love who I picked for the Homunculi. Or maybe rage. Either way I will probably feed off it fetishistically. A red angel? :O That’s…really uninformative!


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